What Would You do for a Friend?
by Doppler Effect
Summary: Even if we act tough, or pretend we don't care, we've all got someone close to us, whether it's a family member or a friend. But what are the lengths we would go to for them if they were in trouble? AU in our world.


a/n: I don't own -Man. This story is set in our world, in our time.

So, this idea came to me after a series of events and thoughts that came together. Eventually, the end thing that stuck with me was 'What would you do for a friend?' You can't truly know until you enter a situation where you would have to take action. But it makes you think, doesn't it?

Well, we can't know.

But we can temporarily kidnap characters to harass them on fanfiction!

* * *

"Kanda!" Linali protested. "Just stay for a minute! I think Lavi's got something to tell us."

Kanda folded his arms. "Who cares?"

Allen grumbled, "If he doesn't get out of the bathroom soon, _I'll_ be leaving."

Kanda didn't even bother to reply, already stalking off. Linali sighed deeply, but this time didn't bother to say anything or try and stop him. She looked at Allen, and he shrugged. He turned his gaze back to the Panera's. Lavi bounded out. The redhead caught a glance of Kanda's back disappearing around the corner.

Lavi said, "He couldn't wait?"

Shrugging, Allen replied, "You were kinda taking a while." He and Linali were sitting and leaning on a bench across the street from the Panera's. The area they were in wasn't crowded, but it wasn't entirely rural either. The town wasn't a few miles wide, it was so small, but it had a decent amount of things packed into it.

"You'd think he didn't have any friends from the way he acts sometimes…" The comment was meant to be joking, but it wasn't taken entirely that well.

With a small, thoughtful frown, Linali wondered aloud, "Do you think that could really be what he thinks? I mean, he's always brushing everyone off, but… Do you think he thinks of us as friends, or just people who drag him around everywhere?"

After a moment, Allen said slowly, "I think… if he thought of us as anything less than friends… he literally would've thrown us in a trash bin and kicked us down the street without a second look or thought. He's not the kind to suffer a person or three who he doesn't like."

"I suppose you're right… Besides, he wouldn't come here every weekend if not."

A week later, Kanda again started dragging himself down to the Panera's. But he managed it with a stride that made it seem like he was going somewhere else entirely and that he wouldn't be attacked by a rabid-ish eye patched friend if he didn't. Generally the stride allowed him space, with people clearing the way ahead of him.

Rumors about a gang in town tended to circulate, courtesy of murmurings about him that were worn out and had to be replaced with something else, but that honestly was nowhere near the truth.

He'd made it down three blocks when his day managed to get considerably worse, despite the fact that the snow plow had taken out his mailbox (why did he have one in the first place, again?) when it was being driven down the road to be serviced and the fire alarms had started blaring for no apparent reason that morning. And not just that morning, but at _two in the morning_ had they started screaming.

"Kanda Yuu."

He glanced over into the small alley. He recognized that voice from a long time ago.

"We need to talk."

"He's late!" Lavi complained as he settled down into his seat.

Allen eyed him. "You were half an hour late yourself!"

"Well, yeah, but generally he's only late by twenty minutes! Except that one time when it was an entire week. But then I woke him up four times in the middle of the night during the week, so I guess that's why he showed up the next time."

"Lavi, there's a reason why Linali suspected Kanda might not think of us as friends."

"That was a week ago. Remind me why?"

Linali stepped in. "How about we just wait another few minutes before we do something horrifically vengeful to him?"

"But then he'll start to prepare for an attack, and it's so much more fun when he doesn't see it coming."

"Lavi."

"Fine! We'll wait. …For a while. But can we go ahead and order food or something?"

Kanda growled, "There better be a reason why you dragged me to a town sixty miles away. And I've got better things to do than be pulled over because you were driving two to three times the speed limit the entire way."

The man glanced at him. They were in an empty apartment that was up for sale and, as Kanda had stated, in an entirely different town. The furniture was gone, and what remained was covered with white sheets to protect it from the sun. The man, however, seemed to just have chosen the place as a matter of convenience.

The man crossed his arms, and tapped his fingers. "You don't remember me."

Kanda paused. "I met you a long time ago. I don't remember now."

"You should." He waited, as if seeing if Kanda would figure it out. The latter, however, was entirely uninterested in his game.

"You dragged me here because of a name you mentioned. I'm leaving if you don't tell me why."

"Not until you remember who I am."

"Screw this." He whipped around, stalking out the door.

"I wouldn't, if I were you. Someone could die."

Kanda stopped, glaring over his shoulder. The man was still standing as he had before, entirely unfazed by Kanda's harsh attitude toward him. He seemed to have been expecting something of the sort. Underneath his surface, though, he seemed to be angry about something.

"I'll do what I want."

"It wasn't always that way." He rolled his neck slightly, trying to get a crick out of his neck. "I'm getting old… but there's something I've always meant to do. Something I meant to set right. …Remember when you were six? The teachers kept sending messages to your uncle, who raised you, because they thought something was wrong. You wouldn't talk to the other kids." Kanda did not look happy, and his mood was plummeting severely, to unknown depths. "Then, in second grade, someone started dragging you around, simply because he was lonely, too."

The young adult froze. "You… You're Alma's father."

"Haven't seen me since the funeral, have you? I guess it has been a long time. I wouldn't have recognized you, except, if you hadn't noticed, there aren't an abundance of long haired Asians in your town. But then, in the same place, you've got a one-eyed friend and a white head. As usual, your habit of dragging your friends down with you and pulling them into dangerous situations has yet to fail."

His hands tightened into fists. "They've never been hurt around me."

The father raised an eyebrow. "Really? I heard the one fell off a building, the other was chased around town by neighborhood dogs, and the last got hit by a car."

"The one fell off a building because he's an idiot, the second was chased by the dogs because he was carrying a cat after it swallowed something that was important, and it was dark when she got hit by the car." The father shrugged it off, and that irritated Kanda more than anything. "What did you drag me here for?"

"To get even." The Karma father gave him a level look. "Alma died when he was ten. Drowned when you two were playing by the docks. You never showed much sorrow. But then, you've never showed much of anything but anger. I brought you here to make you show something else."

He didn't say anything for a full minute. Thinking he was trying to get something from him, Kanda said, "We always went down on the docks. I thought he was hiding, and I couldn't get to him fast enough."

"Doesn't matter anymore. Can't do anything about it now."

The calm way he said that made Kanda uneasy. He didn't let it show.

The father finally told him what was on his mind. "You and your… friends meet every week at the Panera's on 32nd Street. I suppose they're waiting for you there now. You know that. But did you also know that just a few miles away, there's a place where the people on the street are desperate for a buck?" As flatly as possible with what he said, he continued, "I paid one a hundred to slip a poison into their food or drinks. They've probably already taken it by now."

Kanda's jaw clenched, and he took several purposeful strides towards the man until he was up in his face. "What," he hissed, "did you do?"

"They're dying already, whether they know it or not." The father of his childhood friend tilted his head. "You know, now that I can really see you, I suppose I could recognize you from back then. You still carry some of the same characteristics, but it's more in how you carry yourself and your expressi-"

He cut off abruptly as Kanda seized him by the front of his jacket and slammed him into the wall behind him. "You didn't drag me here for that. What's actually your reason?"

"You didn't let me finish. The man I hired has an antidote. If you admit to being the reason Alma died, and say please, I'll call him and tell him to give them the antidote."

"They're not involved at all! They don't even know what happened! Two of them aren't even legally adults!" Kanda yelled at him.

"Alma wasn't even a teenager."

"I know, I remember. You're doing this for him, but he wouldn't have wanted you to do this."

The man now became steel. "You think you know my son better than I did? You only knew him for three and a half years."

"You're taking this out on people who have no relevance to this whatsoever." He spat out the last word.

"That's for me to decide. Now, my requests. They don't have an hour if you don't say anything. And if they get worried and leave to look for you… Well, I suppose they'll die looking for you. Kind of what happened to you mentally with Alma, wasn't it?"

"Give them the antidote, damn it!"

"They've only got half an hour without the antidote. They won't feel the effects coming, but once the symptoms start in the last ten minutes, there's no stopping it, even with the antidote. They're dying. What are you going to do?"

He continued giving Kanda that infuriating level stare. Kanda glared back.

"This is ridiculous-"

"Is it? It's not for them. You're going to let them die for your mistake?"

"I didn't kill Alma!"

"No, but you were responsible."

For the next ten minutes, Kanda continued glaring. The father didn't speak. He was content to wait.

"I was responsible for letting him drown," Kanda gritted out. "Now tell him to give them the antidote."

"No."

"Do I need to kill you and beat him up?" he shouted.

"You don't know who he is," the father pointed out, "and you won't get there in time to get them the antidote, wherever he's keeping it." He didn't say anything else. Another five minutes passed, while he waited patiently for the last bit that Kanda had attempted to skip out on.

"…se…"

"What?"

Kanda gritted his teeth. "Please." The father opened his mouth, and Kanda leaned his weight further onto him, pushing him further into the wall. "Don't press your luck," he snapped before the father could add anything.

The father shrugged. "Just going to tell you… there's no antidote."

Kanda froze.

"I lied."

Snarling, the other said, "No, you didn't."

"By the end, you'll understand why I did this. You don't truly know what I went through when Alma died. Now, even if they weren't truly your friends-" the clenched fist around his jacket went further into his chest "-you'll know."

Kanda didn't move for a moment, carrying a mask of rage.

Then: "You better pray that's not true."

* * *

Lavi grinned, shooting across the Panera's to meet Kanda as he walked in. The Asian man looked even more pissed off than usual, but the redhead didn't care in the slightest. "Yuu! Where were you? Get it? Yuu, you-"

"I got it the first time, dimwit, now get out of my face."

Linali sighed, but smiled at them as they walked over. Lavi had the sense not to hug the man like he usually would, judging from the aura surrounding him that afternoon. "What happened?" she asked as they sat down.

Kanda didn't respond, but he seemed to grow even more moody. Allen raised his eyebrows, but didn't antagonize him like Lavi proceeded to do.

"Come on, you can tell us. What happened? Did the apartment catch fire? Something happened. Or you wouldn't have been that late. What happened?" He poked him, and almost got his finger broken. "Ow! Just tell me what happened and I'll stop pestering you! Promise! …Pinky promise? Ow!"

Kanda slapped the hand away. After a moment of Lavi nursing his hand, grumbling, Kanda deadpanned, "You don't want to know. Stop asking."

Lavi glanced at the strange answer. Allen cocked his head.

Allen said slowly, "Was it legal?"

Kanda looked at him for a long moment, then glanced at Lavi and Linali. Finally, he said, "No."

Linali frowned, and Lavi dropped the subject. They quickly moved onto new topics. Kanda caught sight of an edgy man behind the cashier whom he had never seen before. As a test, he sent a glare the man's way. He scuttled out of sight quickly. Kanda would never see him again.

Allen glanced over at the news half an hour later. "Woah, that's not far from here. That's just in Tipton, it says."

Lavi looked over to see the slightly burned apartment complex, and the man they were wheeling into an ambulance. "Yeah, that's only fifty miles away."

"Sixty," Kanda corrected.

"Sixty. Right." Lavi frowned at the screen. "What happened? He's not burned."

Linali was the closest and the only able to read the subtitles, since the sound wasn't on. "It looks like he fell out of the apartment building when it caught fire. The fire department got there fast enough to prevent any severe damage to the building. It looks like they suspect it was intentional, because the man was beaten beforehand and wouldn't have been able to get out the window by himself, so he was probably thrown after the fire was set."

"That area's not known for parks and daisy fields," Allen murmured. "But I've never seen anything like that so close." Quieter, he added, "Kinda what we all came here to escape from."

"Just comes back to haunt you, doesn't it?" Lavi commented solemnly.

As they walked out an hour later, three waved goodbyes to each other. One didn't. That wasn't uncommon, but this time it was for a more specific reason. He'd kept his hands under the table the entire time, because his hands were bruised and bloody.


End file.
